the girl I thought I knew has gone
by Tarafina
Summary: "Your light dims with every passing year."


**Title**: when the lights come on, the girl I thought I knew has gone (and with her my heart, it disappeared)  
**Category**: The Vampire Diaries  
**Genre**: Angst/Tragedy  
**Ship(s)**: Caroline/Stefan, Caroline/Klaus  
**Main Character(s)**: Caroline Forbes, Klaus Mikaelson  
**Rating**: R for dark themes  
**Word** **Count**: 1,895  
**Summary**: "Your light dims with every passing year."

**_when the lights come on, the girl I thought I knew has gone (and with her my heart, it disappeared)_**  
-1/1-

She makes daisy bracelets. She sits and hums and knots them together. Another, another, and _tie tie tie_.

She pets the white petals until they're red with blood. Blood that drips endlessly from her fingertips like a leaky faucet she never tries to fix.

When she finishes her bracelets, she sits back and she strokes her fingers through her hair, she watches gold turn _red red red_. She presses them to her skin, cold to the touch, and she feels as the blood soaks into her pores. She draws, over and over, shapes and letters and faces that nobody can make out but her. Though part of it lies in the fact that she's the only one who can see the blood that stains her hands in the first place.

She lives on for decades, centuries, longer than any human ever should. But she is death. She died so very long ago, before the humming and the daisies and the blood that seeps from every crack in her skin.

She lives in her head, in fractions of moments; of friends and smiles and three second long audio clips of laughter. _Loop loop loop_.

She sees Bonnie and Elena; she sees them fight and try and perish. She sees Bonnie – _strong _Bonnie – and her head is lying on the ground, mouth etched in a forever scream, feet away from the rest of her distorted body. She sees Elena – sweet Elena - grey and veined with a stake protruding from her chest as she stares up with those doe eyes, black with draining blood.

She sees Matt and Tyler and Jeremy, fighting fighting fighting.

_Failing failing failing._

And Damon… Damon who goes berserk when Elena falls and attacks with every part of him, throwing himself into the center of the chaos, taking out everybody who gets in his way, only to die as it becomes too much.

He smiles, broken but at peace now as he's taken down.

She sees herself.

In the middle.

Werewolves and vampires and witches creating havoc every which way. They run past her in a spray of magic and blood and gore. She watches, hands shaking, not sure who she's fighting, who her enemy is.

Klaus is laughing.

Laughing laughing laughing as he watches hell rain down on Mystic Falls as it was always meant to, as it had been waiting to do for ages.

She sees Stefan, hurrying to her, screaming her name. He's drenched in blood; it wets his skin and his clothes and _drips drips drips_.

She starts moving, slow at first. And she thinks if she can just reach him, they can run away. They can be free. They can never look back. _Never never never_.

He's within reach and she smiles and there are tears in her eyes.

Their fingertips touch, blood warm against her skin, and she knows that they will run far, far away from Mystic Falls. Maybe a house on the beach or a cabin in the woods or a penthouse apartment in the city. They will remember their fallen friends and family and mourn and move on and try to live normal lives. He will cook elaborate meals and she will make sure he doesn't brood and they will learn to laugh and smile again as the shadows slowly fade.

She sees it in his eyes that he thinks this too; that it's possible.

And then a stake slides through his back, comes out through his heart, pointed at her, mocking.

His eyes widen and he chokes. He falls and she catches him, letting out an agonized roar. She cradles him as he dies and she shakes her head and tells him, "Nonono, you can't go! I need you! Stefan, please! _Pleasepleaseplease_…"

But he does; he fades; he greys.

Klaus stops laughing and starts killing. She's never sure if it's because she's upset or because they killed Stefan but he destroys all who stand in his path, every witch, every vampire, every hybrid and werewolf and human, until he's next to her, holding her, holding Stefan.

And they sit, with death all around them, _rocking rocking rocking_.

When the sun rises, the ground is made of bodies; a tangle of arms and legs, organs and blood. She can't tell anyone from anyone else. There is just a circle, an empty berth made around her and Stefan and Klaus.

She doesn't know what happens after; she doesn't know who cleans up.

She only knows that Klaus picks her up from the ashes of her world and takes her away away away.

A house on the beach, a cabin in the woods, a penthouse in the city.

She's in the country now, where the daisies never seem to stop growing, blooming. She walks barefoot in the grass and collects collects collects, before sitting with her legs crossed and a heap in her lap.

She makes bracelet after bracelet for wrists that will never wear them. There is a pile for each of her friends. The highest being Stefan's, then Bonnie's, then Elena's, and so on and so forth.

The daisies always wilt and die and so she makes more more more.

Klaus sits with her sometimes. He twirls the bracelets on his finger; always one from Stefan's pile, like he knows. Like he expects it. And he watches her, with a vague tilt to his mouth.

She is his companion for life; for eternity. But she doesn't speak and only moves to collect and make her daisy bracelets, to drink the blood he feeds her. She's a fractured mind who sometimes gets lost in the past. She freezes and she relives it. She hears them screaming, dying, the wet sound of blood curdling in mouths as people choke out their last breaths; friends and strangers alike. He finds her, hands over her ears, crying, begging for it to stop; he holds her, soothes her, until it fades enough for her to return to her bracelets.

Klaus tells her he still sees the light inside of her; it's brighter when she hums.

He tells her he's waiting for her to wake up; that she won't be lost in her memories, mired in death forever.

Seasons change and years pass; vampires, werewolves, witches and hybrids, they all come and go.

They move house to house, place to place, crossing oceans, back and forth.

At night, he carries her to her bedroom and sits her at her vanity. He brushes her golden hair and he tells her stories about his life; he tells her about his friendship with Stefan. Some of his stories are terrible; they're dark and gruesome. But she smiles, in that far-off way of hers that seems permanently attached to her face. She stares at herself in the mirror and she looks the same; she never ages. Her hair grows longer until he teases her, calls her Rapunzel and laughs. She thinks he's as crazy as she is, it just manifested differently, but she can't say it. She thinks he knows.

He tucks her into bed at night and soothingly strokes her hair until she falls asleep. Each morning, she opens her eyes as he presses his lips to her forehead and calls her Sleeping Beauty.

She wishes she was Snow White and true love's kiss would wake her from her living nightmare.

But they're all dead; all the men she's ever loved. No lips remain to save her.

The world changes, but she can't see it; Klaus keeps her sheltered, keeps her safe. There is only green grass and daisies and him. He kills any who dares come near her; friend or foe. He kills any who speaks her name or Stefan's or any that might hurt her.

Elenabonniedamonjeremytylerm attliz

She thinks, in some weird way, he is her ultimate defender. Her shield. And all at once, her enabler.

"Are you happy, love?" he asks her one day.

He isn't smiling as he combs her hair, a troubled frown drawing at his mouth.

She stares at his reflection in the mirror.

"Do you miss them?" he wonders. "Even now."

She fears she's never stopped and never will.

She still remembers Elena's laugh and Bonnie's smile and Damon's eyes and Jeremy's voice and Tyler's kisses and Matt's hugs and her mother's scent.

"You miss _him_."

Caroline wonders which him he means, though it brings a very particular image to her mind.

When her world as she knew it ended, she and Tyler had long been over. He stood with the werewolves, against her, and she could hardly blame him even if she still felt a tiny ache of loyalty toward him. Matt too was a lover long past.

It was Stefan she'd wanted. Stefan she stood loyally beside as Elena picked Damon, time and again. Stefan who she considered her hero, her best friend, who she loved more with every passing day she spent with him. She thinks it was Stefan's death that left her this way, hollow and lost and unfixable. But it was his friendship that made her full and found and strong once upon a time, so she wonders if the scales are equal now.

"Do you want to die, Caroline?" Klaus asks, his lips brushing her ear.

It's not malice in his voice; not a warning or a threat. It's an honest question, willing an honest answer from her.

And she knows… She _knows_ that if she says yes, if she gives him any indication that she's done, he will let her go. He will kill her himself. But to do so means that he is alone. He will have no one to listen to his stories, no one's hair to brush, no one to love and care for. And despite everything, despite how very removed she is from the world, she is fond of Klaus. He is all she has now; the only real and living being left.

But Caroline is tired. She's lived far longer than she ever should have. And she will never be okay; she will never be what she was.

"Your light dims with every passing year," he murmurs and the dejected loss in his voice makes her heart pang for him.

She reaches up and touches his wrist, hand clasped lightly on her shoulder; it's the first gesture she's made, toward him, in all these years.

He stills and he lets her fingers move over his hand, take it in her lap, and hold it.

She hums.

_Hums hums hums_, and draws daisies on his palm.

"I will miss you, love," he whispers and she can smell the salt of his tears. They dribble silently down his cheeks and wet her soft hair as he leans forward and rests his head against hers, cheek to cheek, his eyes closed. And he hums with her as they rock side to side... side to side.

Her breath hitches, eyes wide, as his other hand thrusts through her back and grips her heart.

And she smiles.

_Smiles smiles smiles_.

Before he tears it out, blood coating his arm, and he sets her free.

Her vision swims.

The scent of grass and daisies and Klaus fills her senses.

Her eyes go dark and she feels fingertips touching hers, no longer wet with blood.

_Stefan_.

Her last words, and her first words in 329 years, are simple and genuine.

"Thank you."

[**End.**]


End file.
